Bypassing the hatred I feel on calling the film by its name (it will always be Northern Lights to me). The annoyance I felt about this article is summed up by the following quote:

The three-part series culminates in an epic battle in which God dies – at the hand of a child.

Not true. Just not true in the least bit. Yes God dies, but not at the hands of our heroine, more in the arms of our heroine. She is helping him, and doesn’t even know that this angel, is actually God.

Little by little I have noticed the standards of BBC news (especially their website falling), sentences that don’t make sense, spelling mistakes, inaccuracies, were they always this bad? or do I compare the BBC to a rose-tinted version of the BBC, that they never were?

Also just remembered went to the last McFly concert last week through in Glasgow, which was also not as good as previous concerts, but good all the same. Watch out for “Star Girl” it unfortunately gets stuck in your head!!!

Anyway back to my lack of things to do, because I am working but still have a fair amount of time on my hands has really given me time to think about the sort of stuff I want to develop for myself. Its something I have never spent time on myself, I have never written a piece of code that wasn’t for an assignment, for a grade on a piece of paper. Although I don’t think is particularly a problem for me, how much could it hurt to try? I spent a bit of time thinking about what I could do.

• I could spend the time improving this website, but what for? I barely ever write posts! As you may have noticed…
• I could do nothing in particular but write code that helps me learn the new technologies at work

But all that to me sounds a little pointless, I know I would never do something unless I had something personal invested in it. I finally started with an idea I’ve had since I first got my iBook back in May.

When I converted to the Mac I lost a few things that I do actually miss, the biggest of which being my iTunes play count.

I guess this will need some explaining, ever since I have had a digital music player, the first being Windows Media Player. I have always been a big fan of keeping track of what my fave tunes were, based on the undisputable facts of a play count. I used to spend hours (this is unfortunately true) rearranging the tracks in my fave playlists manually so that the tracks were in order of highest play count.

One of the main reasons I switched to iTunes was the fact that by a single click I could reorder any playlist by play count order. However by switching my digital music player to iTunes on Windows I lost all that precious play count information – years of work!!!!

In May when I transferred my music collection from iTunes (Windows) to iTunes (Mac) I was dismayed that again I had lost all this information. It seems to me that this problem doesn’t need to be a problem at all, as I can write code that solves this myself!

It is this problem that I aim to solve. The ability to transfer play count data between the two platforms of iTunes.

If there is an already an easy way to solve this then feel free to post a comment and let me know, but to me this is a great project that I will work on irregardless. Making a wee bit of progress each day makes me feel, so far, that I haven’t wasted my non working hours.

Maybe one day when I finish this project I’ll put up and let folks look at it. Decided that the nature of the idea, being a port of content between Windows and Mac, that I would do it in Java and make it a bit more generic.

See you around folks, for once I make no apologies about the geek content of my post…

Lauren xx

On other updates, I have finished my fourth year project. The Dynamic Graphing System is called LDG (Lauren’s Dynamic Graphing System) because it was the placeholder name used in the report, and I never got round to changing it.

I have been offered some summer work at the University, depending on funding, to try and fix the (minor) bugs in LDG so it can be released for research purposes, maybe I’ll change the name to something more interesting then.

Apart from that I have no other firm updates to make, apart from the fact that you can tell it is now officially exam time, as the sun is shining in Glasgow – bloody typical!!

Laurenxxx

After trying to pull, cut and bash them apart, I thought we should just defrost all the pieces and leave it at that, but Matt unable to let the frozen chicken beat him, tried some more, and increasingly wacky, ideas.

• Hitting the frozen chicken with a hammer.
• Trying to warm it up enough to allow him to pull it apart – but not with the microwave, as any sane person would, but with my hairdryer.

Never a dull day in the life of Lauren and Matt (and an extra special treat cause today it’s our 15 month anniversary, love you honey ), and by the way over 45 minutes later he’s still angry with that chicken.

Till next time,

Lauren xxx

Happy New Year! I had a fairly good holiday spending a week and a half in Dumfries, which was great, got to catch up with friends, go out to the infamous Jumpin’ Jaks and spend my New Years Eve the same way i have for the past 4 years (God is it really that long??) in my local pub. Fantastic.

Anyway the real reason for this post is to come up with some interesting new things for Compsoc todo. Recently we’ve been getting a little stick for not having different types of events, especially ones that don’t involve alcohol (?!). We’ve come up with the basic ideas Bowling, Laser Quest and well thats about it…

We need ideas to get everyone who does computing to get involved, nothing overly geeky, or overly expensive, but any ideas would be much appreciated.

Have fun,

Lauren xxx

I wouldn’t say it was controversial but it certainly did get some of my class mates wondering who I was talking about (and even more people complaining about bringing my boyfriend into the third year lab )

This follow up post is NOT going to name and shame those involved, because I’m not that sort of person, this post is just to say I have since realised (like many said) that it really isn’t like that in the real world.

For the past two and half months I have been working at IBM in Greenock. Which has been a new and extremely useful experience to me. I have gained confidence in many ways not only in Computing Science but also in just being a girl and being in this subject.

I guess I am always a little down on my “abilities” cause I am not so interested in learning stuff in my own spare time. However through this new experience I have learned in HTML, jsp, CSS, Javascript, JDBC and DB2 none of which, before this summer, I had done anything with (believe it or not) and it has shown me that I can learn anything if I want to.

But on the follow up, I have never once felt from any of the employees of IBM or any of the other students, that they believed I was ‘inferior’ to them and I haven’t been treated any different. I have always felt comfortable in the working environment, so for that, thanks to all the people I work with.

The whole experience has given me the new opportunity that I may actually follow my degree in to a suitable career. In the past I never wanted to for a mixture of reasons, now I believe that there is a chance that maybe this is what I am supposed to do.

Now all I have to worry about on returning to University is project, modules, assignments, modules, exams, fourth year………

Lauren xx

1. I had my dreaded group project to finish, with many many late nights in the lab. Then of course were the third year exams. At the time every exam seemed like a nightmare, as no matter how much studying I did, it never felt like it was enough. I finally got my results sitting at an Internet kiosk in San Miguel, Ibiza, and saying I was pleasently surprised would be somewhat of an understatement. I really was very pleased with my results this year.
2. As mentioned before, I went on holiday to Ibiza for a week with Matt. It was such a great break, especially as for a time I didn’t think we would manage to get away. Just being able to sit on a sunbed and read books in the sun for a week was exactly what I needed. The fact that all our alcohol and food was free was just a bonus…
3. At the end of last term my flat mate decided to move out, after 2 years of living in the flat with me and a year of us being in Halls together. Although not entirely unexpected it was still a shock to find me looking for a new flatmate, after so long. Even with a months notice it was still a very emotional day when she moved out.
4. I started work for IBM, Greenock, at the end of June. So far I am having a really good time, meeting loads of new people and learning loads.

So thats the basic roundup, of my life since my last post.

The vacancy in the flat was one of these confusing things. I obviously needed a new flatmate to help pay the bills, I needed someone I could rely on and who I would get on with. I sent out messages to practically everyone I knew in Glasgow, but after a few weeks and only one viewing I started to get a down heartened about the whole thing.

You see it seemed to me like there was really only one obvious solution, but due to many different factors, I just let it go. In my head though it kept coming back to me, what if Matt moved in? It was one of those beautiful romantic ideas, and the thought of making that sort of committment appealed to me. We could move furniture around, go on shopping trips to Ikea, buy pictures for the walls, all that sort of stuff that just hits you at a certain age (although maybe with guys a little older).

Matt finally brought it up with me and it seemed that everything had fallen into place. The problem was after a couple of days I got freaked, I was 20, what the hell was I doing settling down??? I’m not afraid to admit my childishness did cause problems between me and Matt, as I suppose is a little apparent in one of his more recent posts about the age difference. The thing was after I got over the intial hurdle of telling my parents, everything seemed to fall back into place again for me although this time a little more realistic. There was still the hopes of Ikea and coming home to someone, but know I realised why this was something I had to do.

And it wasn’t what I expected, I didn’t have to let Matt move in because I needed a new flatmate and he was the “easy” option, or because I felt I needed to “tie” him to me now that he is yet again going out into the scary world of work and I might lose him, it was simply because I love him and because I want to live with him and take that step.

So as of 12 midnight tonight Matt is my official flatmate, the contract has been signed the rent sorted and yesterday we started moving in some (more) of his stuff. Last night I cooked us a fancy dinner as part of the whole moving in thing and then I gave him his moving in present. So now both of our names are on the front door….

I feel that somehow I have grown up even over the past few weeks, but I’m happy with that. I’m really happy for where I am heading and all the choices and changes (although most unnoticable to most people) I have made over the past year.

Keep having fun peeps, hope to keep up with the posting now.

Lauren xxx

***

It is slowest washing machine on the planet, even though it has like a Pentium 4 Processor in it – Can you even say that without making that be-beep be-beep noise they have in all the adverts? Is that part of its trademark or copyright or something, anyway I digress again…

***

… it made this loud bang, then it was fine. I checked it and it wasn’t making any noise now, so I just left it, as I didn’t know what else to do. After I had just turned my back on it it started to misbehave, making this funny high pitched noise.

Smoke was pouring out of it, so I switched it off at the wall. The smoke was quite thick but I managed to get all of my clothes out and I only lost one top due to burn marks.

So all in all not a completely disasterous day, I’ve had worse

Hope you all have a good Easter weekend. Matt is coming down to stay, so I’m sure I’ll have a great weekend. Missing him so much already (it’s only been a day).

Keep smiling, everyone.

Lauren x

I have finally started blogging with the big boys. It is a very proud day for me, although I fear my mum may think I have finally become an undisputed geek.

Once I have finished looking at all the new settings I get with this new fangled blog I may even find time to write a post or two…. I’ll certainly try…

Over and out world,

Lauren

P.S. I fear the title of this post alone has upped my geek rating